Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey’s solution for dealing with the nation’s recurring debt ceiling debate is to prioritize what the federal government would pay first if Congress ever can’t agree to extend the limit.

The U.S. Senate voted down Toomey’s plan Thursday, which he offered as an amendment to a bill that puts off dealing with the debt limit for three months. Every Democrat voted to table it, which effectively kills the amendment. Toomey was supported by every Republican.

Toomey contends that hitting the debt ceiling wouldn’t be so terrible as long as the U.S. government promised to use the money it did have on hand to first pay its debt obligations, pay Social Security and pay active duty military personnel.

“It’s an attempt to absolutely minimize the disruption, the danger and the drama, it's an attempt to get away from this government by cliff and to have a sensible approach to bringing our spending under control,” Toomey said on the Senate floor.

If the plan sounds familiar, it’s because Toomey first floated a version of it in the early weeks of his U.S. Senate tenure in January 2011. He took the idea to the editoral pages of the Wall Street Journal and on national cable shows. The aggressive push by a freshman lawmaker is one reason why Toomey was selected to serve on the so-called deficit reduction supercommittee, which was a byproduct of a deal to raise the debt ceiling in 2011.

Toomey reupped his plan this year, forecasting that when Congress does have to deal with the debt limit again in May or June, prioritizing payments gives Republicans more wiggle room to hold the ceiling hostage in exchange for spending cuts and deficit reduction.

But Toomey’s plan has its share of critics who argue that by paying some things and not others still means many government programs, from education to transportation to law enforcement to FDA inspections, would come to a grinding halt. Such disruptions, critics say, would still result in economic uncertainty.

U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who spoke against Toomey’s amendment on the Senate floor, compared it to the popular movie and book series the “Hunger Games,” because programs would be pitted against each other like the children in the series.

“You think the country is worried about a lack of confidence now, if this were the law, we'd be even -- there would be even less confidence. There would be total chaos in this country,” Baucus said. “I cannot think of a more disruptive amendment that would cause so many problems. It truly is a 'Hunger Games' amendment.”